The Hunchback of Neiman Marcus

  One day

  your daughter’s

  cooing, gurgling, wordless.

  The next, you’re asking her how old she is

  and she’s holding up two pudgy fingers,

  crying out, “Awmos twoooo!”

  Not long after that,

  she’s blowing your mind

  with her ability to count to ten.

  And soon she can count

  all the way up to a hundred.

  And then to a thousand.

  Then one day,

  when you sit down to help her

  with her math homework

  you realize that you have no idea

  what equals.

  You must have forgotten.

  Or maybe

  you never knew.

  But your daughter does.

  “That’s easy,” she says. “It’s x.”

  “Of course it is!” you bluff.

  “Of course…”

  I’M CLEANING OUT SAMANTHA’S CLOSET

  Anything to avoid writing.

  I clear away

  the forest of forgotten T-shirts

  sighing on the floor.

  I wrestle

  with the maddening mess

  of fallen hangers.

  I toss out

  the moldy pairs

  of lonely outgrown sneakers.

  Then,

  way in the back,

  I find a box.

  Here’s Samantha’s mobile—

  the one that hung above her crib

  when she was a baby.

  I run my fingers over it,

  then wind it up and listen to its melody

  one more time…

  Sam used to love this mobile.

  She’d lie on her back gazing up at it,

  mesmerized by its spinning pastel birds,

  listening so intently to its song,

  her plump lips parted as if she wanted

  to drink in its sugared notes,

  her hands

  clasping Monkey

  to her chest,

  her legs moving

  through a memory of water

  as though she was still womb-swimming…

  I CLOSE THE LID ON THE BOX

  Then,

  I shove it back into

  the dusty depths of the closet,

  wipe the tears from my eyes,

  and hoist up

  the overflowing wastebasket

  to carry it outside

  and empty it into the trash bin.

  But on my way there

  I hear Pinkie yapping.

  I glance into the neighbor’s yard

  and see Madison playing hide-and-seek.

  She’s scrunched down on her haunches,

  hiding from her mother

  behind the thin stem

  of their mailbox,

  her face tucked into the crook

  of her chubby little elbow,

  apparently convinced

  that this makes her invisible.

  Jane taps her foot,

  checks her watch, shades her eyes.

  She sees her daughter (obviously)

  but feels obliged to pretend she doesn’t.

  In a voice tighter than the jeans she’s wearing,

  she calls her daughter’s name—

  “Madison…Madison…

  Where are you Madison?”

  Jane stares at the sky, heaves a leaden sigh,

  as if she longs for the company of adults;

  for life as it was before the invasion

  of this tangle-haired energy-zapper…

  Poor woman.

  She doesn’t know

  that someday she’ll long

  for this late August afternoon

  when she could have held

  each instant

  like a jewel

  in the palm of her still smooth hand.

  A NO-BRAINER

  Yesterday, Roxie called to tell me

  that if I don’t finish my book by October,

  I’ll lose my spot on next fall’s list.

  So, today, I was planning

  on spending the whole day

  writing dozens of brilliant poems.

  I was going to pop in some ear plugs,

  put on my Bose headset,

  and make some real progress—

  in spite of Madison’s screaming,

  Pinkie’s yapping, Jane’s trumpeting,

  and Duncan’s thundering drums.

  But then Samantha

  invited me to help her bake

  some butterscotch brownies.

  She said she wanted

  to fill the freezer with them

  before she leaves for college.

  “That way,” she explained, “When I’m away

  at school, you can defrost a batch every week

  and mail them to Grandma for me.”

  I was planning

  on spending the whole day

  writing dozens of brilliant poems.

  But I spent the day

  with my daughter, instead,

  baking dozens of brilliant brownies.

  AFTERMATH

  The kitchen’s

  a sugary,

  floury,

  butterscotchy mess.

  But just as we begin to scour it,

  Wendy, Tess, and Laura arrive

  to whisk Sam away

  for one last girls’ night out.

  “Can you give me a few minutes?” she says.

  “I’ve got to help my mom clean up.”

  “We’ll help, too!” Tess says.

  “We will?” Wendy says.

  Laura gives Wendy

  a swift kick in the shin.

  “We will!” Wendy says,

  and everyone cracks up.

  Then, the four of them set to work

  like whirling kitchen dervishes,

  refusing to let me

  lift a finger.

  I clutch Secret to my chest,

  as I listen to their familiar chatter

  filling up my kitchen like sunlight

  one last time…

  And when the room is spotless,

  the girls wolf down some brownies,

  hug me good-bye, and zip out of the house,

  leaving in their wake

  a terrible silence.

  I CLOSE THE DOOR BEHIND THEM

  Then I turn and lean against it,

  stroking Secret’s fuzzy head.

  I glance out the window

  at our pepper tree

  and see a handful of ashen leaves

  plummet to their deaths.

  I look past our roses

  and see Madison riding her tricycle.

  My nose

  begins to sting—

  the way it always does

  right before I start to cry.

  But I force back

  the flood,

  afraid that if I let

  a single tear fall

  it will unleash

  a storm

  bigger

  than Katrina.

  REMEMBERING THE DAY SAMANTHA LEARNED TO RIDE

  My suddenly six-year-old daughter

  hopped onto her brand-new popsicle-pink bicycle

  with an I-can-do-this-thing gleam in her eyes

  and began peddling across the empty school yard.

  I trotted along next to her

  like an out-of-breath sidecar,

  one hand gripping

  the back of her seat,

  the other hand

  holding fast to the handlebar,

  making sure she didn’t tip too far

  in either direction.

  “That’s it…

  You’re doing great…Keep it up…

  Don’t worry…I’ve got you…

  I’ve got you…”

  Her fingers

  white-knuckling the handle grips,

  her jaw set, r />
  she wobbled, wavered, swerved, swayed

  and then, without warning,

  broke free of my grasp and shoved off,

  picking up speed faster

  than a jet roaring down a runway.

  I stood there, stunned, watching my daughter

  blaze away from me like a meteor,

  her white helmet glinting in the sun,

  her back tense and proud.

  And a moment later, when she cast

  a quick glance back over her shoulder at me,

  I saw that her grin was even wider

  than the gulf that was opening up

  between us…

  I TAKE A FEW DEEP BREATHS

  Then I sit down at the kitchen table,

  plop Secret into my lap,

  and pick up the phone to call Alice.

  Maybe listening

  to all the gory details

  of her latest Match.com misadventures

  will keep me

  from having to think

  about my own problems…

  When I’m halfway through dialing,

  I realize that I’m calling my mother’s

  cell phone by mistake.

  But I finish punching in the number,

  hoping that I’ll catch her

  in a rare moment of lucidity.

  I’m not even really sure

  what I want to talk to her about.

  I guess I just want to hear her voice.

  Or ask her

  how she handled it

  when I left for college.

  Or pour out all my troubles

  to the one person who knows me

  better than anyone.

  That is—

  when she knows me

  at all.

  WHEN MY MOTHER HEARS MY VOICE

  She says, “Holly dear, I’m so glad you called!”

  She does know me! And she sounds so sane.

  But then she says, “The sky’s green here today…

  Is it green there, too?”

  My hope plummets like a bird pierced by an arrow.

  “Uh…no, Mom…it’s just the usual blue…”

  I can hear Dr. Hack in the background.

  I’d know that loathsome chuckle of his anywhere.

  “Mom,” I say, “let me talk to the doctor.”

  “Hey, Dr. Handsome,”

  she calls over to him.

  “My daughter wants to talk to you.”

  “Myra darling,” I hear him coo,

  “flattery will get you everywhere…”

  Then he tells her he’ll take my call in the hall.

  And when he says hello, I cut right to the chase:

  “When are you going to wean her off the steroids?”

  “Actually,” he says, “we began last week.”

  “But let me guess,” I say. “The bad news

  is that she’s still psychotic?”

  “Yes,” he says,

  “but the good news

  is that she’s so psychotic

  she doesn’t even know it!”

  And when he starts chuckling

  at his own foul little joke,

  I tell him I’ve got another call

  coming in.

  Then I hang up

  and let fly a stream of curses so scary

  that Secret leaps off my lap

  and streaks out of the room.

  I JUST WEIGHED MYSELF

  And discovered,

  to my horror,

  that I’ve gained five pounds.

  The day of my daughter’s departure

  has been bearing down on me

  like a bullet train

  and I’ve been stuffing my face

  to try to quell the emptiness

  growing in my gut.

  I take a look at my belly in the mirror—

  it’s so vast I could almost pass

  for pregnant.

  The irony of this

  does not

  escape me.

  I run my hands over my mountainous midriff

  and find myself drifting back

  to the day before Samantha was born…

  I remember how I savored the flutter

  of her Ginger-Rogersy feet

  waltzing away inside of me

  and thought about

  where they might carry her

  one day;

  how I gazed down

  at the opalescent orb

  that barely contained her,

  picturing her fully grown,

  heading off to college

  without so much as a backward glance,

  and whispered,

  “How can you leave me,

  after all I’m going to do for you?”

  AND I’LL CRY IF I WANT TO

  Watching Samantha

  pack up her things for college,

  the mournful call of Jane’s trumpet

  wafting in through the window,

  I find myself

  feeling as though

  I was there when they came

  to set up the tent and the dance floor,

  there when they

  brought in the heat lamps,

  there when they

  delivered the tables and chairs,

  the linens and china,

  the silverware and champagne flutes…

  And now

  I’m here,

  watching them pick it all up again

  and load it back onto the truck.

  But, somehow—

  I blinked

  and missed

  the party.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE SAMANTHA LEAVES

  Pinkie’s yapping wakes me at 2 a.m.

  I don’t remember my dream,

  but it’s left me feeling panicky.

  I can’t fall back to sleep.

  So I throw on some clothes

  and hop onto my Schwinn.

  Ten minutes later,

  I find myself wandering though the park

  where Sam and I played when she was small.

  There’s an ugly hodgepodge of rope bridges

  where the stately metal jungle gym

  once stood.

  And the seesaw Samantha loved to ride

  has been replaced by some kind of weird

  sproinging Plexiglas contraption.

  There’s still a swing set,

  but it’s in the wrong spot.

  And the wooden seats are plastic now.

  The tire swing’s gone.

  The silver slide’s gone.

  The monkey bars are gone.

  Even my little girl’s favorite—the creaky old

  mother-powered merry-go-round—

  has vanished.

  And so has

  my little

  girl.

  ALICE DROVE US TO THE AIRPORT AT NOON

  She gave Samantha

  a fierce hug good-bye and promised us

  she’d take brilliant care of Secret.

  Now I’m on the plane,

  tucked into the middle seat

  between Michael, who’s sketching,

  and Samantha,

  who’s looking out the window

  at the clouds.

  I cover her hand with mine

  and ask her

  how she’s doing.

  She answers my question

  with an eloquent smile,

  then goes back to staring out the window.

  But a few seconds later

  her head drops down

  onto my shoulder.

  My hand flutters up

  like a startled bird

  to cradle her cheek.

  We sit here together.

  Wordless. Close.

  Closer than we’ve ever been.

  Her shoulders begin to quiver.

  Her warm tears slip down my fingers,

  anointing my wrist.

  And when my own tears come,

 
it’s as if they’re gushing

  directly from a crack in my heart’s dam.

  I stroke her cheek,

  kiss the top of her head,

  wrap both arms around her.

  WE’RE THE FIRST TO ARRIVE AT HER DORM

  We explore the sterile, echoing rooms

  of Samantha’s suite,

  scouring it for aspects to admire—

  the view of the courtyard,

  the size of the common room,

  the picturesque slant of the walls.

  Then, before we’re quite ready, the other

  three girls come swarming up the stairs,

  their suitcases and parents in tow.

  All of us greet each other, shy as deer.

  But soon our daughters’ breezy banter

  banishes the hush.

  Then, beneath the chatter, comes the tinkling

  song of summer’s last ice-cream truck,